At some point, if you're hosting a show, you may be tempted to use a teleprompter to set up a segment, get all the facts just right to introduce a guest a certain way. Now you don't have to use a teleprompter. And certainly if you're doing a simple internet based interview show, you don't have to use a teleprompter. That's one of my favorite shows is this weekend venture capital. They don't bother doing that. And This Week in Startups, the Jason Calacanis show, great show.
Huge audience, great sponsors. He doesn't have all the nonsense with teleprompter, so you don't have to. But if you are going to use a teleprompter, you need to be good at it because nothing makes a host look worse than not being able to read a teleprompter. Look at how often Saturday Night Live makes fun of Al Sharpton on msnbc because he stumbles over words and just doesn't seem like he's comfortable with the teleprompter although he is getting better. So you need to know The basics of how to use a teleprompter. So here it is.
The problem most people have when they start to use a teleprompter is they speak at the same speed, the same tone, the same volume, they don't pause, and their head stops moving. See how bad that was. So the whole key to the teleprompter is you occasionally had speak a little faster, and occasionally a little slower. You have to occasionally speak a little louder and sometimes a little softer. There has to be variation in the speed variation in the volume. The fourth thing, you have to pause occasionally, people who are new at using a teleprompter never pause because they think oh, if I pause, the words are going to pass me by and I won't know what's next.
The teleprompter follows you or at least it should you're not there to just follow the teleprompter. The fourth thing is you got to move your head Your body and even your hands a little, because newbies at this, freeze everything because they want to get the words just right. You have to keep moving your head. And this is another thing if you just practice regularly you'll get better and better at it. But if you don't move your head and nothing else moves, that's when the eye movement looks so weird and artificial and unnatural. So it really all comes down to those four things.
You got to change the speed, change the volume, pause occasionally, and you have to move do that and you'll be fine with the teleprompter.